The Scarlet Fields of Can Ka' NoRay
by Desiree Alicia Kruger
Summary: Roland and Susannah reach the final road to the Dark Tower. They have lost Eddie and Jake to Death and have picked up Patrick the Artist. The final battle between the Crimsion King and Roland, and the exploding conclusion to the Dark Tower series.


Dear Constant Reader, as hard as it is for me to say it, Roland Deschain's tale must come to an end. For not even the Gunslinger is immortal. For years (from June 19, 1970-April 7, 2004 to be exact.) you all have followed his quest avidly.

You all watched Roland as he traveled across the endless desert, only to meet the old hut dwelling Brown. We listened as Roland recounted his tale of how he destroyed the small town of Tull, only to have to continue chasing the man-in-black. We paid close attention when the Gunslinger met Jake for the first time and learned how he arrived in Mid-World. We watched as Roland heard the prophecy from the demon at the way station. We cried as Roland let Jake fall to his death, only to argue with Walter, and lose him again.

Well if keep going on like this, you all will probably get tired of it anyway and leave.

So my point is this. Roland's tale and quest must end somewhere. So I take up the task of ending it. Please forgive me I beg ya if this sounds a lot like Stephen King, for I have read every last one of his novels and all 200+ of his short stories.

So read ahead Constant Reader, and watch in aticenapation as the final chapter of Roland and his ka-tet's quest unravels.

Remember He who speaks without an attentive ear is mute.

Long Days and Pleasant Nights I pray God thank ya.

D.A. Kruger July 1, 2006 4:38 am.

**Disclaimer:**

**I, D.A. Kruger do not own the characters, names of characters, or any other part of Mr. King's beautiful masterpieces. I only manipulate and change them for purposes of this tale.**

**The Dark Tower: VIII**

**The Gunslinger**

**Part One**

**The Scarlet Field of Can'-Ka No Rey**

**Chapter One**

**Roland**

Roland sat on the hard ground staring off into the glorious sunset. The revolvers that were originally his fathers lay around his waist with a plate added to both of the sandalwood handles. His father was a little liter than our Gunslinger is. Roland sits there reminiscing about the past to himself. He would be reminiscing with Oy, but at the moment Oy was asleep next to him. Roland found himself thinking about the small town of Tull. How the man-in-black had laid him a trap and the Gunslinger had walked right into it.

He had to kill the second woman ever felt anything for. He shot her in the head without even thinking about. He then proceeded to shoot a man who was touched by God in the head for he drove the woman insane.

Roland stopped himself before he dot to thinking about things that would drive him crazy. He didn't want to catch himself thinking about Susan. He had watched his first true love burn at the stake. His heart still ached for her, but he knew he would never gain her back. He decided to lie down and rest for Eddie and he had to resume their journey with Bill tomorrow.

In the final days of their journey, after Bill- no longer Stuttering Bill, just Bill- dropped them off at the Federal, on the edge of the White Lands, Susannah Dean began to suffer frequent bouts of weeping. She would feel these impending cloudbursts and excuse herself from the others, saying she had to into the bushes to do her necessary. And there she would sit on a fallen log, or perhaps the cold hard ground, put her hands over her eyes and let the tears flow. If Roland knew this was happening- and surely he must have noted her red eyes when she returned to the road- he made no comment. She supposed he knew what she did.

Her time in Mid-World- and End-World-was almost at an end.

Bill took them in his fine orange plow to a lonely Quonset hut with a faded sign out front reading

FEDERAL OUTPOST 19

TOWER WATCH

**TRAVEL BEYOND THIS POINT IS FORBIDDEN!**

She supposed Federal Outpost 19 was still technically in the White Lands of Empathica, but the air had warmed considerably as Tower Road descended, and the snow on the ground was little more than a scrim. Groves of trees dotted the ground ahead, but Susannah thought the land would soon be entirely open like prairies in the American Midwest. There were bushes that probably supported berries in warm weather-perhaps even pokeberries-but now they were bare and clattering in the nearly constant wind. Mostly what they saw on either side of Tower Road-which had once been paved but now been reduced to little more than a pair of broken ruts- were tall grasses poking out of the thin snow cover. They whispered in the wind and Susannah knew their song:_ Comela-come-come-, journey's almost done._

"I may go no further," Bill said, shutting down the plow and cutting Little Richard in mid-rave. "Tell ya sorry, as they say in the Arc o' the Borderlands."

Their trip had taken one full day and half of another, and during that time Bill entertained them with a constant stream of what he called "golden oldies". Some of them were not old at all to Susannah; songs like "Sugar Shack" and "Heat Wave" were current chart toppers on the radio when she returned from her little vacation in Mississippi. Others she had never heard at all. The music was not stored on records or tapes, but on beautiful little silver disks that Bill had called "ceedees." He pushed them into a slot in the plow's instrument cluttered dashboard and the music played from eight different speakers. Any music would have been fine to her, she supposed, but she was especially taken by two songs she had never heard before. One was a deliriously happy little song called "She loves You." The other, sad and reflective, was called "Hey Jude." Roland actually seemed to know the latter one; he sang along with it, although the words he knew were different from the one coming out of the eight speakers. When she asked, Bill told her the group was called The Beatles.

"Funny name for a band if you ask me." Susannah said.

Patrick, sitting with Oy in the plows tiny rear seat, tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around and he held up the pad through which he was working his way. Beneath a picture of Roland in profile, he had wrote: **BEATLES, not Beetles.**

**"**It's a funny name for a band no matter how you spell it." Susannah said, and that gave her an idea. "Patrick, do you have the touch?" When he frowned and raised his hands-_I don't understand _the gesture said-she rephrased the question. "Can you read my mind?"

He shrugged and smiled and raised his hands in a _I don't know_ gesture.

Susannah didn't think he was telling the truth. She thought he knew very well.

They reached "the Federal" near noon, and there Bill served them a fine meal. Patrick wolfed his and the sat off to one side with Oy curled at his feet, sketching the others as they sat around the table in what had once been the common room. The walls were covered with TV screens-Susannah guessed there were three hundred or more. They must have been built to last, too, because some of them were still operating. A few showed the rolling hills around the Quonset, but most broadcast only snow, and one showed a series of rolling lines that made her feel queasy in her stomach if she looked at it too long. The snow screens, Bill said, had once shown the Dark Tower. Then, suddenly, the picture dissolved into nothing but those lines.

"I don't think the Red King liked being on television," Bill told them. "Especially if he knew company might be coming. Won't you have another sandwich? There are plenty, I assure you. No? Soup, then? Patrick? Your to thin, you know-far, _far_ too thin."

Patrick turned around and showed them a picture of Bill bowing in front of Susannah, a tray of neatly cut sandwiches in one metal hand, a carafe of iced tea in the other. Like all of Patrick's other pictures it went beyond caricature, yet had been produced with a speed of hand that eerie. Susannah applauded. Roland smiled and nodded. Patrick grinned, holding his teeth together so that the others would not have to look at the dark hole behind them. Then he tossed the sheet back and started on something new.

"There's a fleet of vehicles out back," Bill said. "and while many of them don't run anymore, some still do. I can give you a truck with four wheel drive, and while I can't assure you it will run smoothly, I believe you can count on it to take you as far as the Dark Tower, which is no more than a hundred and twenty wheels from here."

Susannah felt a great fluttery lift-drop in her stomach. One hundred and twenty wheels was a hundred miles, perhaps even a bit less. They were close. So close it was scary.

"You would not want to come upon the Tower after dark," Bill said. "At least I shouldn't think so, considering the new resident. But what's one more night camped out on the road to such great travelers as yourselves? Not much, I should say! But with even one more night on the road (and barring breakdowns, which the gods know are possible), you'd have your goal in sight by mid-morning of tomorrowday."

Roland considered this long and carefully. Susannah had to remind herself to breath while he did so, because part of her didn't want to.

_I'm not ready,_ the part thought. And there was a deeper part- a part that remembered every nuance of what had become a recurring (and evolving) dream- that thought something else: _I'm not meant to go at all. Not all the way._

At last Roland said: "I thank you bill-we all say thank you, I'm sure- but I think we'll walk the rest of the way. Were you to ask me way, I couldn't say. Only part of me thinks that tomorrowdays to soon. That part of me thinks we should go the rest of the way on foot, just as we have come so far." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm not ready to be there yet. Not quite ready."

_You too, _Susannah marveled. _You too._

"I need a little more time to prepare my mind and my heart. Maybe even my soul." He reached into his back pocket and brought out the photocopy of the Robert Browning poem that had been left for them in Dandelo's medicine chest. "There's something writ in here about remembering the old times before coming to the last battle… or the last stand. It's well-said. And perhaps, really, all I need is what this poet speaks of-a draught of earlier, happier sights. I don't know. But unless Susannah objects, I believe we'll go on foot."

"Susannah doesn't object," she said quietly. "Susannah thinks it's just what the doctor ordered. Susannah only objects to being dragged along behind like a busted tailpipe."

Roland gave her a grateful (if distracted) smile-he seemed to have gone away from her somehow during the last few days-and then turned back to Bill. "Do you have a cart I could pull? For we'll have to take at least some of our gunna… and there's Patrick. He'll have to ride part of the time."

Patrick looked indignant. He cocked an arm in front of him, made a fist, and flexed his muscle. The result-a tiny goose-egg rising on the biceps of his drawing arm-seemed to shame him, for he dropped it quickly.

Authors note: Well there you have it Dear Reader, the beginning of the end for Roland. By the way some of you who read the Dark Tower series will notice that Jake and Eddie are missing from our little tale here. That would be because Eddie had sadly died from a bullet, and Jake had died for the second time in his life by getting hit by a car. The story picks up with Roland's ka-tet broken beyond repair. He now only has Susannah dean, and Oy the billybumbler, and also Patrick (a boy whom Susannah saved earlier on.)to follow him on.

Give me some time and you will see exactly what is troubling Susannah in her dreams, and if her, Patrick, and Oy will see the Tower with Roland and breach it's walls. There's more from where this comes from. Thanks for reading,

D.A. Kruger

Long Days and Pleasant Nights.


End file.
